Chapter 52

WHEN HE FINALLY REACHED the shore of Pirate Key, Smith crawled along on his hands and knees. He still wore his sopping backpack, but he had cut away the parachute harness. Sloshing up along the beach, he got to dry sand and collapsed face-first. Small beach crabs scuttled out of the way. His swim goggles hung on a rubber strap around his neck, but the wet-suit hood still covered his red hair.

Smith spat sand from his mouth. “Safe at last!”

The muzzle of a rifle appeared with a sudden stab just in front of his face. He went cross-eyed, looking down the barrel hole. Finally, he raised his eyes to see a black Cuban soldier standing over him, more curious than hostile. A second guard with a complexion as smooth as a lemon stood nearby. Both carried outdated, but deadly, firearms.

Smith pried himself slowly off the beach, leaving a wrinkled intaglio pressed into the sand. “This place is supposed to be uninhabited,” he said with a sigh. “Just shows you can’t trust a single thing the FBI tells you.” He climbed to his feet, shaking his swim flippers as he looked at the black guard. He had gotten beyond fed up with all the problems dumped on him ever since his prize vacation had started. “So, who are you, anyway?”

“Who are you?” the lemon-faced guard said.

Gambling on his infamy, he said, “I’ll show you who I am.” With great assurance, Smith pulled back his wet-suit hood to display his famous red hair. “I am the great Pedrito Miraflores! Everyone has heard of my exploits.”

The two guards looked at each other and blinked. They both leveled their rifles and circled around behind him, weapons pointed at his back.

“Wasn’t that the right thing to say?” Smith asked. “I can be Lieutenant Tom Smith instead, if you like.”

“March!” the black guard said, nudging him with the rifle toward a rugged coral outcropping. Smith could make out a masked vertical door set into the dark rock.

They escorted him through the doorway and along dank, sloping tunnels into the bowels of the small island, along wide passageways with overhead fluorescent lights and floors of solid concrete. This underground outpost looks much finer than that dumpy CIA place in Colodor, Smith mused. His flippers made wet slapping noises on the cement floor.

Down a side passageway, Smith spotted the radio room. A Cuban operator sat at a sea-foam-green metal desk, surrounded by communication equipment. The operator glanced at the new prisoner without much interest, lowered his head back to the radio equipment, and snapped his gaze up in a double take. Smith waved at him, hoping to find a friend.

The guards prodded Smith deeper into the secret compound. He glanced to the left and stared down a passage that ended in a barracks room. Ten Cuban soldiers lolled about, shooting dice, tossing playing cards into a garbage can, throwing knives at a dartboard. This was the most populous uninhabited island Smith had ever imagined.

A sergeant near the barracks door looked up with no interest. He suddenly raised a finger, pointing aghast at Smith.

“Nice welcome I’m receiving,” Smith muttered.

The two guards urged him toward a barred steel door at the end of the underground passage. The lemon-faced soldier stopped Smith while the black guard raised the bar and pushed the heavy door half open.

“Come on out here, you!” the guard shouted into the room.

Lieutenant Tom Smith’s identical twin stepped from the half-opened door, dressed in the tatters of a naval officer’s white uniform. The rank braid on the cuffs was torn, half the buttons were gone. His shirt was filthy, the collar awry, the black tie twisted to the side and over one shoulder. Somewhere along the line, he had lost the cap. His hair was rumpled.

Smith stood there with his mouth open. “What . . . what have you done to my uniform? My career? My rank?”

The real Pedrito Miraflores looked at Smith and pointed an accusing finger as well. “You! You did this to me! You’ve ruined my reputation. How am I ever going to get work as a revolutionary leader again?”

Smith and Pedrito faced each other, glaring.

The two guards looked from one to the other, confused. “The first one arrived at dawn,” the black guard said.

“And now we’ve got two,” the lemon-faced soldier said, pointing his rifle from Smith to Pedrito and then back at Smith. “Must be one of those double agents I’ve heard about.”

“Yes, but which is which?” the first guard said. “We don’t want to execute the wrong one.”